Curbside recycling of clothing and small household goods will soon be coming to Westland and Wayne.

Councils in both communities have approved four-year contracts with Simple Recycling, which will provide free collection service weekly. The cities will receive $20 per ton of materials collected by Simple Recycling.

Westland has had bi-weekly curbside recycling of plastics, paper and glass for several years. Like the existing recycling programs, the Simple Recycling collection is aimed at reducing the amount of material that ends up in landfills.

“Information packets will be arriving soon from Simple Recycling,” Westland Mayor William Wild said. “There are a lot of recyclable items that can’t go into the big blue bins.”

Simple Recycling will provide large green bags for the recyclable items and leave a new bag when a collection is made from the curb. The items must be clean and dry for collection.

The household items — small furniture and appliances like toasters, microwave ovens and coffee makers, computers and electronics and kitchen items like pots, pans, dishes and silverware — have to be something one person can carry to the curb. If something is not accepted, the item will be left behind with a tag explaining that.

“We had some concerns. We didn’t want to take anything from our friends at the Salvation Army or Purple Heart,” Wild said. “But studies find only 15 percent of these items are donated.”

That comment was echoed by Scott Brady of Simple Recycling.

“We’re not competing with the charities, we’re competing with the landfills. Only 15 percent of clothing is recycled to traditional charities,” Brady told the Wayne Council. “We wholeheartedly support the charities. It’s that other 85 percent we’re trying to capture.”

With the contracts approved, Brady said it will take about four weeks before the program gets underway.

Brady had also commented that Simple Recycling partners with local thrift stores. The items collected are sorted by quality, with 20-30 percent being sold for resale. Lesser quality items are bundled to go to Third World countries and unusable items are processed for raw materials.

Simple Recycling would educate residents about the program through letters and packets of information with recycling tags and bags to place at the curb. A third mailer would explain the pickup schedule.

In Wayne, Interim City Manager Lisa Nocerini was tasked with cleaning up charity collection bins placed around the downtown area. She said only two groups had obtained permits and the bins weren’t being maintained.

“As the city clerk said, the bins are having babies. The one at Sav-a-Lot has graffiti on it,” Nocerini said. “We’ll work with those that have been approved and aren’t being maintained.”

The city will pick up the bins without permits and if they are uncollected by the owners, the bins will be scrapped, she said.